A Tiny Mobile Printer That Polaroids Your Instagram Pics

There was a time not too long ago when photos hung on walls, stuck to fridges, and occupied albums you could thumb through for hours. Now they just get pushed down one’s Instagram feed never to be seen again.

Well, just as technology did away with a once-hot love affair with printed photos, so can it rekindle the flame. To that end, LifePrint is proposing to build small, battery-powered mobile printers that are internet-connected and read from a LifePrint mobile app.

“We’re trying to take photo printing out of the age where it’s an errand,” says Robert Macauley, the creator and vice president of LifePrint, which just launched a Kickstarter campaign.

Like Instagram, you follow people on the LifePrint app, only instead of just liking a photo, you can print it. You can even set up the printer to automatically print out any photo sent by a specific person. The idea of coming home to a bunch of photos to look through has us really looking forward to getting our hands on one of these. It’s like an old-school AP wire printer, but curated by you.

At the moment, people like me, who just want to share with friends and family, are the target audience. But over time Macauley says the network would hopefully expand to include more popular users. He see bands, sports teams or celebrities sharing their photos with LifePrint as a way to communicate and gain followers.

“The photos would be like little personal gifts from these users,” he says.

According to Macauley, the printers will eventually sell for $200. They’d be about the size of a hardcover novel, and would print 3″x4″ photos in about 60 seconds. Macauley says a printer could handle 30 prints on one charge and each photo would cost about $.65 to produce. If all goes to plan, and they’re able to meet their $200,000 funding goal, LifePrint hopes to have the iPhone version in January 2015 and the Android version in April 2015.

In terms of the app, he says the company developed software that will help optimize the printing process. If users try to send enormous photos, the app will shrink them so the printer doesn’t get bogged down. They’ve also built the app to work with the kind of medium-resolution photos that most smartphones produce these days. They’re undecided about whether the app will have Instragram-like filters, but it will allow users to add text and borders.

In addition to facilitating the printing and sharing process, Macauley says he hopes LifePrint ultimately helps people remember the value of a physical photo. He says that in the digital age, photos sometimes become disposable and meaningless. But when they’re on paper we tend to slow down and spend a little more time taking them in.

Physical photos also make us better editors. Macauley guesses most people won’t be printing the photos of what they ate for lunch, but instead choose those photos that have real meaning.

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